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The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.

'Potential to Damage Trust'

The authority's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.

"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."